Voices of Sandy: After Sandy, they're leaving the beach for good

Dec. 24, 2012

Joyce Bornemann, of Union Beach, surveys her ruined home one block from the beach. The night the storm hit, she went to bed so that if she had to die she would die in her sleep. Bornemann loved living near the water but says she won't rebuild because she can't face the possibility of being wiped out again. / Peter Ackerman/Staff Photographer

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Superstorm Sandy chased Joyce Bornemann and her family out of their Union Beach home — for good.

“We don’t want to rebuild back in Union Beach because we don’t want to go through this again,” Bornemann said.

Huddled upstairs with her husband during the storm, the surging waves battered her two-story home, leaving deep cracks in the brick façade of the first floor and buckling the living room floor.

The cost of having to raise the home is sending her and her husband Brian inland.

They will sell their property on Second Street and hope for the best with reimbursements.

Immediately after Sandy, the storm scattered her family.

Her 27-year-old daughter and 9-month-old grandson moved in with a friend. Her 22-year-old son did the same elsewhere.

And Bornemann and her husband moved into an unfinished basement in her stepdaughter's home, an hour south in the Bayville section of Berkeley.

“So, we just want to go to a place where there’s no water, no nothing — just inland, away from the water,” Bornemann said.

“It’s nice to live by the water but when storms come, it’s terrible.”

ONLINE

Hear Bornemann tell her story in “Voices of Sandy,” an occasional series giving voice to victims of the superstorm, at APP.com and our other digital platforms.